To Encourage You

1 Samuel 15:22 “Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams.”

As you weather the storms we are facing at this moment in history, including in your personal life, who or what are you trusting in?  You’ve probably heard about how after the 9/11 attacks church attendance was suddenly at unprecedented levels.  However, it was only a short while afterwards that attendance fell.  It’s as if “church” and “religion” was viewed as a good-luck charm that was a psychological fix at that time of crisis, but something that was no longer necessary after the crisis passed.  As you may have heard, most churches didn’t meet in the face of the coronavirus crisis, so they went to on-line sermons instead. The result?  I heard a report that one pastor’s sermon during the pandemic was listened to by 350,000 people.  Seems pretty clear that people were reaching to the church for hope once again.  But are we reaching out to “religion” for that hope, or to the God Whom we claim to worship and follow with that religion?  There’s a difference, you know, a very big difference.

It’s to that difference that the verse above from 1 Samuel 15 speaks.  As background, God had commanded the king of Israel at that time, King Saul, to inflict capital punishment on the godless Amalekites, including their king. He was to also destroy everything else in that kingdom. But what did Saul do?  He kept the king alive and he kept the best of the spoil.  When confronted about this by the prophet Samuel, Saul’s defense was this: “I have devoted the Amalekites to destruction. But the people took of the spoil, sheep and oxen, the best of the things devoted to destruction, to sacrifice to the Lord your God.”  It was then that Samuel rebuked Saul with the words above.  He tells him that sacrifices (i.e., religious practices) are no substitute for obedience to the Word of God.  And that’s just what’s happening in so many situations today. 

Many people follow certain religious practices. They may attend church, give offerings, light candles, and participate in communion and other religious rituals, but as soon as they walk out of the church doors, that’s where their “religion” ends. They don’t read God’s Word; thus, they can’t heed what it actually says. Their lives are directed by the popular thoughts and ways of the world around them, rather than by what God has said in His Word, which is so often the direct opposite.  They trust in religious practices, but have not paid attention to or obeyed what God has said.  As the words above would warn us, to do so is a poor substitute for following the only true God. 

Listen to God’s Words to the prophet Amos about those in his day who were doing this very thing: “I hate, I despise your feasts, and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.  Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the peace offerings of your fattened animals,  I will not look upon them. Take away from me the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps I will not listen. But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:21-24). 

May the Lord help us to trust Him and obey what He has said, rather than to trust in religious practices as if they will protect us in the end.  So, what does obedience to the voice of the Lord look like?  What has He actually said?  Above all, it is to put our faith in what His Son did for us on the cross, as He died to pay the penalty for all our sin. It is by placing our faith in Him that we receive strength in the face of the any crisis we might face in this world, and salvation in the world to come.  It is when we put our faith in Him that God will give us His Holy Spirit. It is then that He has promised “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26). It will be a heart inclined to truly obey Him.  For to walk in disobedience while at the same time practicing “religion,” is something that finds no favor with Him at all.